Awesome stuff you should know! And win!

Hey everyone! I wanted to draw your attention to a few awesome things today.

First is the announcement of Amazon's Essential Books for Young Adults feature. This Market Watch article (via Publishers Marketplace) does a nice job of explaining the new feature, which has 2 components: Editorial Essentials and Customer Selected Essentials (voting based). I have been very candid about my misgivings regarding Amazon's ethical compass, which has given me a bit of a shaded outlook on the company as a whole, despite the fact that I am a Prime member. However, I am absolutely thrilled by their Editorial Essentials selections. Obviously, there are a gorgonzillion superfantastic YA books out there that could have been selected but I was especially, especially happy to see these made it onto the list: SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson (banned in some places!), THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie (also banned in some places!), WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON by John Green and David Levithan (OMG PEOPLE IT IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO LOVE THIS BOOK MORE), THE GOLDEN COMPASS by Philip Pullman (another banned book! take THAT book-banners!), and THIRTEEN REASONS WHY by Jay Asher (which is extraordinarily moving and everyone of any age should read in order to remember why it's important to be kind to each other). Click through the links above to see the remainder of the list or to buy any of the fabulous titles listed here.

Next up, you can win something really cool over at the Magic and Mayhem blog! The Magic and Mayhem authors have created a really slick urban fantasy sampler and you can enter to win a copy by leaving a comment on Shawntelle's informative post on the sampler making process. I've had the pleasure of reading Sandy Williams's book THE SHADOW READER and let me tell you, people: it's worth trying to win the sampler for her first chapter alone. Amanda's and Shawntelle's books sound awesome too, so get thee over to the entry and comment!

Last, but certainly not least, I wanted to say congratulations once again to the lovely Kaz Mahoney on the exciting announcement she made over at her blog. Yay! Moth is a really fun character and I'm looking forward to reading more of her adventures.